It is a very fine specimen of the old Scottish château, with walls of immense thickness. Probably it is the oldest inhabited mansion house in Scotland; a place full of interest. And not least interesting, the picturesque old gates at the end of the avenue, that have remained so long unopened. The tale used to run that they had been closed after the '45, by an Earl loyal to the Stuart cause, who swore that they should never be opened till the rightful king came back to his own again. As a matter of fact, however, the misfortunes of Prince Charlie and his family had nothing to do with it. The gates were not closed till 1796, when the seventh Earl of Traquair, after the death of his countess, declared that they should remain shut till they opened to admit one worthy to take the dead lady's place. That, at least, is the story.
The Earl who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century belonged to the Church of Rome. "A quiet, inoffensive man," he is said to have been.
[Original]
But that in no way protected him from the unwelcome attentions of those zealous Presbyterians who at that time "thought it someway belonged to us' to go to all the popish houses and destroy their monuments of idolatry, with their priests' robes, and put in prison the priests themselves."
[Original]
So a pious mob set out from Edinburgh one grim December day in 1688, and trudged through the snow to Traquair House. Earl and priest, having got word of their coming, had fled before the arrival of this gentle band of Reformers, and though they ransacked all Traquair for "Romish wares," they did not find all they expected. Much had been hidden away. The vestments of the priest this, that, and the other popish emblem could not be found. However, they did get a good deal—an altar, a large brazen crucifix, and several small crucifixes, "a large brodd opening with two leaves, covered within with cloth ot gold of Arras work, having a veil covering the middle part, wherin were sewed several superstitious pictures," a eucharist cup of silver, boxes of relics, "wherin were lying, amongst silk-cotton, several pieces of bone, tied with a red thread, Having written on them the Saint they belonged to," "a harden bag, near full of beads," "Mary and the Babe in a case most curiously wrought in a kind of pearl," a hundred and thirty books—silver-clasped many of them. No doubt the books, Popish or otherwise, excited to frenzy those pious but illiterate persons, almost as effectually as "the pot of holy oil," and the "twelve dozen of wax candles" that they seized.